


You've Got Mail

by imbrokelyn99



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Craigslist Missed Connections, M/M, You've Got Mail AU, things Dan Levy and I have in common: an inability to establish normal timelines
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-16
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-09-01 19:24:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20263273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imbrokelyn99/pseuds/imbrokelyn99
Summary: When David finds a Craigslist Missed Connections ad about himself, he decides to reach out to the person who posted it, starting an email chain that just may change his life.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a very real Craigslist missed connections post and by the seminal 1998 romantic comedy directed by Nora Ephron that shares its name with this fic.

“David!” Alexis called from the bathroom before sauntering out of it. David looked up from his place at the table, where he’d been staring at a small mirror and patting in his skincare. She frowned at him wordlessly, her phone trapped between her hands. 

“What, Alexis?” he said with annoyance colouring his voice. 

“David, I think this Missed Connections ad is about you.” 

He made a face at her. “What? Those Craigslist things? Ew, why are you on there?” 

“Oh my god, it’s just, like, a self-esteem thing for me to count how many Missed Connections ads are about me. _Anyway_, I think this is about you. From when we stopped at that Tim’s in Toronto?” 

David frowned but acquiesced and stood up to take a look. He grabbed her phone from her hand, ignoring her scoff of frustration, and focused on the message.

“‘Tall brown-eyed traveller dressed in black at Tim Horton’s’?” he read aloud incredulously. “Alexis, that could be anyone.”

“Oh my _god_, David, keep reading!”

_The probability of you reading this and replying are slim but here we go. I saw you today, the first day of summer, at the Tim Horton’s on Bay and Bloor at approximately 1:45 pm. _

_You were arguing with a girl, your sister, I guess. You were dressed in black and were carrying a black messenger bag. You seemed to be travelling; at least, that was the impression I got. You left a few minutes after you got your order. You were in line behind me and you seemed like the kind of guy I’d like to talk to forever. _

_I hope you find me. More than likely not through this attempt, but hopefully out there in the world. _

_Until then._

David’s heart twinged a bit; he’d been used to being noticed, sure, by paps or beautiful strangers who had expensive bar tabs, but he was never noticed _like this_. Like someone had seen him and thought he had more to offer than a good lay and a night of free drinks. 

“We stopped there on our brother/sister date, remember? And we were arguing about the chocolate hazelnut croissants?” she asked hesitantly, prodding at his memory.

“Ew, don’t call it that. I think the town sign is rubbing off on you,” David said with a grimace.

“Ew, David! Shut _up_!”

“Also, I still think those croissants are worth the calories,” he insisted absentmindedly, suddenly lost in thought. Who was in line at that register with them?

“Whatever, David. But I still think this person’s talking about us.”

David fixed his gaze on her. “Do you remember who we were behind in line?” 

She frowned and looked back at the screen. “Ummm, no. I don’t think so.” 

David groaned in frustration. “Goddammit, Alexis, now I’m gonna be thinking about this all day!” 

She smiled at him wickedly. “Well, David, there’s one sure way to figure out who this is.” 

He raised an eyebrow at her and watched, aghast, as she hit the “Reply” button and an email textbox popped up.

“Oh, no. No, no, no, absolutely not. Are you serious?” 

She shrugged and pushed the phone into his chest. “Listen, whatever happens, you could either get laid or make a friend. And god knows you need them, since Stevie’s literally your only friend.”

“Stevie’s not my only friend! I have...other friends here.” he said defensively, hands waving about.

“Mhmm, sure, David. Except I don’t think that just because Twy knows your coffee order, you can consider her a friend,” she replied, looking at him pitifully.

“Go swallow a steak knife.” 

She rolled her eyes and took the phone back to text him the link to the ad. “It’s on your phone if you want it.” She turned then to leave and bother their parents with something.

“I don’t! I don’t want it!” he called after her.

That night, when he was snuggled up in bed—well, as snuggled up as one could be on a mattress as hard as a tombstone—he scrolled through his contacts list. All his text messages from the last few weeks were from Stevie, Alexis, his parents, or Roland. 

He sighed. Maybe it couldn’t hurt. He tapped the link Alexis texted him and read through the ad again before hesitantly tapping the “Reply” button. At the very least, if he did follow through with this, he wouldn’t be giving _that_ much about himself away. He made sure to use his personal email—david72@gmail.com—which was nondescript enough and a vestige from the days when AOL was still widely used.

He sat up in bed, staring blankly at the cursor in the empty textbox that seemed more menacing with each blink. He ran his hands through his hair, frustrated. Had it come to this? Really? Answering Missed Connections ads on Craigslist? How had he fallen so far? 

He spent an hour talking himself out of it, then talking himself back into it again. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. He could use a friend. Maybe this could be, like, a texting relationship. Or an email thing, like in _You’ve Got Mail_. He bit his lip at the thought. Maybe there was a charming 1998-era Tom Hanks waiting for his email, fifty miles away. He put his phone down and leaned over in his bed, his hand searching blindly underneath it until he finally unsheathed the bottle of vodka he’d snuck into the room for dire situations. This could be considered an emergency, right? Was a romantic crisis an emergency? He thought so. Maybe. He unscrewed the cork cap and took a swig, wrinkling his nose as the liquor slid down his throat. 

“Fuck it,” he said quietly to himself.

“Hi, I’m David,” he typed. “I saw your missed connections ad and thought that maybe I was the one you saw in that Tim Horton’s a few weeks ago. My sister and I made a pit stop there on our way to—“ he paused. Maybe specifics weren’t a good idea. He thanked his guardian angel, Meg Ryan, for giving him some sense of self-preservation before backspacing. 

“My sister and I made a pit stop there while we were travelling. I was with her in line, so if it _was_ me, then you guessed right about that.” What else could he say? Should he ask for a picture? Or for what the other person looked like? Was he just...supposed to end the email there? And, most importantly, why do the movies make things look so easy? He suddenly wished he were in the middle of all this, not at the beginning. At the beginning, you never really know what you’re about to walk into. But when you’re in the middle of it, you’ve worked yourself into a groove. There’s never anything scary about the familiar. “I like to start my notes to you as if we’re already friends,” Meg Ryan’s character Kathleen had written. But they had already been talking in the movie, David reasoned with himself. He took a deep breath. How about—

“If you want to talk for hours, I can do that. I’m especially good at discussing photography, New York restaurants, and Mariah Carey’s discography at length. Talk soon, maybe.

Until then,

David.” 

He hoped the sender would appreciate the call back to their own ad. Before he talked himself out of it again, David filled in the subject line (“Re: Your Missed Connection”) hit send. He cringed as the email sent sound played, but he put the cork cap back on the vodka, slid it under his bed, and settled back into the pillows. He tossed his phone onto the nightstand carelessly. Maybe his phone would shatter into a million pieces and he’d never have to think about that person responding ever again. 

“Shut _up_, David,” Alexis hissed, half-asleep.

“_You_ shut up,” he grumbled back quietly. He closed his eyes and settled into a fitful sleep.

The light slanted through the blinds and splashed across David’s face, forcing him awake. He groaned and rolled over to check the time on his phone. 9:54, said the screen. He sighed and rolled onto his back to stare at the ceiling and contemplated starting his day. David was thinking about the endless stretch of hours that lay ahead of him, bare of anything to do, when his phone chimed that he’d received an email. Suddenly he remembered last night: the ad, the vodka, the email he sent. He bared his teeth at the craggy once-white motel ceiling, mentally flinching at what awaited him. 

He rolled over to grab his phone and, accepting his fate, went straight for the email app. There, at the top of his inbox, sat a message from patrickb@gmail.com. “Re: Re: Your Missed Connection,” read the subject line. 

David’s mouth pressed itself into a hard line. He chanced a glance over at Alexis’s bed and was relieved to find that it was empty, the sheets thrown back over themselves and the pillows mussed. The bathroom door was open, displaying their dingy, Alexis-less restroom, so David figured she must still be on her morning run. He didn’t know how early she’d gotten up, but figured he didn’t have much time before she returned. He _really_ didn’t want to have to explain what he was doing on his phone. 

After a deep breath, he opened the email. 

_Hi, David,_

_I’m sorry to say I’ve never been to New York and I’ve only listened to a couple of Mariah Carey’s songs. But I like photography a lot! When I was in college, I used to take photos for the school paper. Gave me an excuse to use the camera my parents got me, plus it made for a good hobby. I was a business major so I didn’t get a lot of opportunities to really be creative. It was a nice outlet. I haven’t picked up my camera in a while, though. Are you a photographer, too? Also, for curiosity’s sake: what are your favourite restaurants in New York and why?_

_Until next time,_

_Patrick._

David read through the email a few times. Patrick didn’t seem to be that concerned about whether or not David was actually the person he’d seen. Maybe, David thought, Patrick was like him. Just looking for companionship, sending out missives into the void and hoping someone with a good heart would answer back. David could be that. Whatever this could be, and whoever Patrick was, maybe it could be the start of something good. Something that David could hang onto. 

So he smiled ruefully down at his phone and typed out a reply.

_Hi Patrick,_

_I’m not a photographer, but I used to own a gallery. I like to think that means I have good taste, but I recently had to move to a podunk town out in the country and I’m worried that it’s corroded my judgment in art. I don’t own a camera anymore, and even if I did, there’s not much to photograph out here, anyway. Do you think prolonged exposure to tacky old wallpaper and townspeople who think “dressing up” means wearing a polo shirt could ruin my taste? Actually, my taste aside, prolonged exposure to those things may be lethal for me. Jury’s still out on that, though._

_To satisfy your curiosity: Sarabeth’s on the Upper East Side makes a braised short rib hash that I still dream about, Bubby’s in TriBeCa has the best pancakes in Manhattan (can you tell I like breakfast food?), and there are very, _very_ few things I would venture out into Brooklyn for, and the pizza at Sal’s is one of them. If you ever find yourself in New York, those are definitely places to visit. _

_I can’t relate to your major, since I went to an art school in Austria for college and majored in “Creative Processes,” which, previous statements I’ve made aside, is definitely not as practical and high-demand as business. I’m not saying I have the stomach for it, but. You know. It’s important, so._

_Until next time,_

_David _

David had just hit Send when Alexis burst through the door clad in her workout gear. David’s head snapped up to watch her pad into the room. How all her makeup hadn’t smudged off during her run, David would never understand.

Alexis popped into their parents’ room for a second and walked back in with bottled water from the mini-fridge. She took a look sip and, for the first time since she got home, finally acknowledged David. 

She raised her eyebrows and nodded in the direction of his phone. “So, have you emailed Mr. Missed Connections yet? Or am I going to have to do it for you, like when you made me set up Raya and were too afraid to message Patrick Schwarzenegger when you matched?” 

David groaned. “First of all, we said you’d never bring that up again. Second of all, how the _fuck_ was I supposed to react when the son of the fucking _Terminator_ turned out to be interested in men? It was like when Lance Bass came out to you at that New Year’s Eve party. Like, what was I supposed to do with that information?”

Alexis made a face at him. “Ew, David, you’ve seen _Terminator_?”

“Whatever, I was high at someone’s house and it was playing. That’s not the point,” David said with an eyeroll and a great flourish of his hands.

Alexis sat at the foot of her unmade bed. “You’re right, David, the _point_ is you need to email Mr. Craigslist before I do it for you and, like, say something super embarrassing about you.” 

“Okay, how do you know it’s a Mr. though?” David said, wrinkling his nose at her in indignance.

Alexis’s eyes were wide as plates. “Why, is it a Ms.? Have you emailed them?” she asked, getting up and stepping slowly toward him like a leopard on the hunt.

David leaned back against his pillows. “Um. No? But it wouldn’t be any of your business if I did, so,” he said, averting his eyes. 

“_David_! You totally emailed them! Let me see what you said!” Alexis squealed, lunging at her brother.

“Over my dead body!” David yelled, launching himself backwards to evade her clutches. He fell off the other side of his bed and scrambled clumsily to his feet. Alexis ended up draped diagonally across David’s twin bed, her legs hanging off one side and her arms stretched out. David tried to make a run for it, but she snagged the cuff of his joggers and brought him down. She kept a vice-like grip on his ankle as she climbed over him and sat down on the small of his back, ignoring his wails of indignance. 

“Get the _fuck_ off me, you fucking animal!” he yelled.

“Not until you give me the phone, David!” she said, struggling to keep him on his stomach while she leaned over to reach for his phone. 

The door to their parents room burst open and a flurry of feathers and sequins walked into the room. “Children, _please_,” Moira said with her hand poised at her temple. “Mummy’s reading over some council documents before the meeting today and I need some _quiet_, so for the love of god, could you take your horseplay somewhere else this morning? In the woods behind the motel, perhaps? It would be a much more suitable setting for this violent rough-housing.” 

David paused his frustrated writhing to listen to his mother and Alexis took the opportunity to snatch the phone out of his hand. She hopped up off his back and ran to the bathroom, slamming the door behind her and locking it. Moira, seeing that she’d gotten at least one child to quiet down, threw her hands up and returned to her room. David scampered over to the bathroom door and jiggled the knob.

“Let me _in_!” 

“Ooooh, David, he’s a _business major_! He’s probably, like, super smart and makes really good money,” Alexis said through the door.

“Alexis, I swear to god, I’m gonna rip your fucking hair out,” David said through gritted teeth.

“Chill _out_, David! Oh, he sounds so cute! Like a little button!” 

“Alexis, give me my _fucking phone back_,” David seethed. 

She unlocked the door and pulled it open, and David stumbled right into her. 

“Oh my god, what did you _do_?” he asked, frantically going back through his sent emails after she pushed his phone into his chest.

She plopped down onto the seat at the table and started twirling her hair around her finger. “I didn’t do anything. This is, like, really cute for you, David,” she said seriously. 

He made a face at her that he hoped would mask the pleasant warmth of validation that he felt in his stomach. 

“Mmkay, well, I’m gonna handle this on my own from now on. So keep your hands off my fucking phone.” 

“Whatever. Just don’t screw this up,” Alexis replied, her pointer finger tapping at the table for emphasis. 

David considered her words and bit his bottom lip. He wouldn’t screw this up...right? How hard would it be to keep an email chain going?


	2. Chapter 2

As it turned out, keeping an email chain going with Patrick was easy as breathing. It was like something came loose inside David whenever his phone told him that he’d received a new email from Patrick. It almost felt like the fortress he’d built around his heart was being dismantled brick by brick, email by email. They’d established that they’d stay away from specifics for now, but everything else was fair game—and they did talk about everything. Some days there’d be long emails dissecting albums song by song or fully fleshed-out movie reviews. Other days they’d shoot short emails back and forth over the course of hours, like they were texting. Maybe they’d ruminate over something funny that happened to one of them as if they were discussing the events of their days over drinks. 

Despite their no specifics rule, they talked about their families a lot. No names, of course, but David loved griping to Patrick about Alexis’s on-again-off-again romance with Ted, and he found it strangely therapeutic to tell him about his plans for helping Wendy out with the Blouse Barn’s store branding. Sometimes he’d pepper in stories about the funnier parts of his mother’s famous histrionics (though careful not to mention her soap opera star history—or anything Googleable, for that matter) and his father’s misguided but valiant attempts to launch the motel into the 21st century. 

In turn, Patrick shared stories about his own family. He sent David his mom’s famous strawberry rhubarb pie recipe when David mentioned that he was starting to like learning how to cook, and his lively retellings of the cute dates he went on with his baby cousins to the county fair always brightened David’s days. Sometimes he’d tell David about the hikes he went on with his dad, and the hikes he took on his own, even after David said he’s not really the “hiking” type. David had never read Henry David Thoreau, but he imagined that Patrick’s colorful descriptions of the flora and fauna he’d encountered on his nature trips rivaled those of even the most fervent literary transcendentalists. 

More than anything, the way Patrick romanticised small-town living and found a deep love and admiration for the littlest moments of joy in his family life and within nature...it was all making David’s experience in Schitt’s Creek much softer around the edges, much easier to shoulder every day. With every email exchange, David found himself stopping to reflect more and more about the life he and his family had built here, and more and more he found himself feeling grateful and even _proud_ of it. 

But, of course, those moments tended to be interrupted by Alexis yelling at him through their bathroom door to get out of the shower, or by a customer looking for something funerary among the leopard-printed hangers of the Blouse Barn. 

It was after a particularly harrowing day at the store that David called an emergency bitch-fest at the motel. Alexis was in charge of the alcohol, Stevie in charge of the food (and the weed), and David was in charge of ushering his parents out the door with tickets to see _A Night to Remember_ at the local drive-in and reservations at the café afterward. 

_You’ve Got Mail_ was not, in David’s opinion, an appropriate movie to play a drinking game to, but if he were to use two words to describe how he was feeling at the moment, he’d pick “fucking bleak.” 

“Yeah, and you look it,” Stevie said deadpan when he told them as much. 

“Yeah, David, you need some serious TLC,” Alexis said, examining her cuticles.

“Okay, I’m not the type to take advantage of pity—” Stevie and Alexis simultaneously shot him a look at that—“but, for tonight, could we just watch something I want to watch? Instead of, like...voting, or whatever?” 

“What do you wanna watch?” Alexis asked. 

David looked at them guiltily, tucking his bottom lip in between his teeth. “_You’ve Got Mail_?”

Alexis groaned. “We’ve literally seen that movie _a million times_, David.” 

David looked to Stevie, who shrugged. “I’ve never seen it.” 

“Okay, Stevie’s never seen it! That should be grounds enough to watch it, right?” David said, spinning to face his sister.

Alexis considered him for a second before tugging roughly at her earlobes. “Ugh, _fine_.” 

So they settled in on David’s bed to watch the movie, crowded around his laptop and tipping back generously-poured drinks. 

David could not stop the tears if he wanted to, or even if he had the mental and emotional capacity _to_ want to. As afraid as David was of the mortifying ordeal of being known, it felt safe when characters from his favourite movies spouted lines that struck him like lightning. It felt less like being picked apart under a microscope and more like finding kinship in old friends that he liked and respected. It was part of the many reasons why he loved this movie so much. The combination of heady emotion and cheap, strong vodka bore a burst of energy in David, moving him to write, to get it all down immediately. He pulled his phone out from underneath him and opened the email app.

_Hi Patrick,_

_I had a terrible day today. I had to help an old, old lady find several sets of lingerie for her fiftieth wedding anniversary. She modelled every choice out for me. If you could please unscrew my skull and pour bleach into my brain, that would be great. Oh, and then she only bought one thing and threw a tantrum for not giving her a bigger discount. _

_That’s not why I’m writing though. I’m sitting in my room with my sister and my friend and we’re watching one of my favourite movies ever, You’ve Got Mail. I don’t know if I’ve written to you about this before (I mean, it’s very likely that I have because I’m kind of obsessed), but it’s an amazing movie. Anyway, there’s a line in the movie that Meg Ryan says that goes, “I lead a small life. Valuable, but small. Am I doing it because I like it? Or because I’ve been afraid?” and if I’m being honest, I would have started crying then if I hadn’t been crying already. _

_I guess, for me, it resounded so much because, after a day like today, I_ feel _small. I feel like my life is a meaningless, endless parade of selling leopard-print wrap dresses and having dinners at the local café where the food is barely edible. Before we moved here, I could have probably had the privilege of reinventing myself, trying something new, and while you’ve actually made small-town life seem much more bearable, I can’t help but feel trapped in routine here. It’s like, I want everything to change, but I’m afraid of all the good stuff I have going for me changing, too, and then I find myself almost wishing everything would stay the same._

_You don’t really have to respond to all that if you don’t want to. I guess I was just...writing out my feelings and sending them out into the void. So...goodnight, dear void._

_Until next time,_

_David_

He had just tucked his phone back under his leg, feeling better after unloading his emotions, when Stevie asked, “What was that long email about?” 

David’s head whipped up at that. “Were you looking at my phone?” 

Stevie rolled her eyes. “Relax, I didn’t get to actually read anything. Come on, what was that?”

“Oh my god, were you emailing Patrick? That’s so cute that you guys are still doing that!” Alexis trilled. 

“Who’s Patrick?” 

“Oh my god, I’m not doing this right now,” David said, throwing his hands up. He leaned over and poured himself another vodka soda. 

Stevie hit pause on the movie and turned to face him. “No, we’re definitely doing this right now because I can’t believe you didn’t tell me that you’ve got a...secret penpal or something tucked away in your phone.” 

David stared at her, paused mid-sip, and then put his drink down. He sighed heavily and said, “Okay.” 

Alexis bounced excitedly as he launched into the story of the missed connections ad and of the email chain that he’d started with Patrick. Maybe it was the alcohol, or the bad day, or the fact that just talking about his feelings through email made him feel a million times better, but David revelled in telling Stevie and Alexis about his exchanges with Patrick. The floodgates had suddenly been opened and he found himself telling them about the things he talked about with Patrick, the descriptions of nature, the family outings, all of it. Finally, when he’d told them about the email he’d just sent, and the lightness he felt after sending it, he slumped back against his pillows, a little spent. 

“I like this for you,” Stevie said with a wicked grin.

“Isn’t it the cutest?” Alexis asked.

There was a sense of pride and excitement blooming in his chest, threatening to spill out of him, and his mouth twisted with the effort of tamping it down. “I mean...it’s not a big deal, they’re just emails.” 

“Okay, sure,” Stevie started, “but if they’re making you as happy as you say they are, there’s gotta be something there, right?” 

“M_hmm_, David, you can’t just discount all those fuzzy feelings you’re having because you’re talking over email. It’s like when I had a whole text relationship with Leonardo DiCaprio for like six months.” 

Stevie shot her a sidelong glance. “I guess what we’re saying here is, you never know where it might lead, and it’s good that, you know, you have this.” 

“Do you think it’s possible to fall in love with the idea of a person?” The words were out of David’s mouth before he even knew he was thinking them, and he imagined that he looked as bewildered at his own words as Stevie and Alexis did. 

“Are...you in love with him?” Stevie asked, watching his every move like he was an animal she was trying not to spook. 

“I...I don’t know. I don’t think I’ve ever been in love before,” David said, wrapping his arms around himself, as if trying to shield his heart from attack.

“I could’ve told you that,” Alexis said with a laugh.

He made a face at her. “Okay, that’s enough from you.” 

She let out a frustrated groan. “I’m just telling the truth, David! Anyway, has he told you about, like, a significant other or anything?” 

David chewed on his bottom lip. “No, I don’t think so.” 

Alexis nodded slowly. Stevie cleared her throat. “Listen, I’m...not great at these kinds of conversations but...I stand by what I said. Maybe you should just be careful.” 

David nodded. “That’s probably smart.” 

“Now I understand why you wanted to watch this movie,” Stevie said, biting her lip and gesturing to the screen. 

David rolled his eyes but couldn't keep the guilty smile from breaking across his face. “Shut up.” 

The rest of the evening passed rather uneventfully. They finished the movie and started another, some D-rated Netflix-made teen flick that was much more fun to drink to, and they knocked out piled together in David’s bed before Alexis got up in the middle of the night, grumbling about needing space, and moved to her own bed. Stevie had woken up at that and decided to head home for the night, feeling much soberer than she had before they went to sleep. 

Morning came, as it always does, and David woke feeling groggy and a little sick, but his heart felt like it had healed somewhat during the night. He checked his phone immediately and a grin broke over his face when he saw that Patrick had emailed him back.

_ Hi David,_

_I’m sorry you had a bad day. That sounds...rough. I’d rather not bleach your brain, since that would kill you, but would you settle for a Men In Black-style memory wipe? I think I could arrange that. _

_As for You’ve Got Mail, no, I’ve never seen it, but yes, I think you’ve mentioned it before. That’s a great line, and I completely understand how you feel. Honestly, I’ve been feeling the same way for a while. Misery loves company, right? But I’m so, so sorry that you’re going through this. I wish I could help._

_I guess I don’t know how to tell you to change your life, since I don’t know what your limitations for doing that are, but I think it would help to look at things from a new perspective. I’ve been re-examining my life recently and I’m starting to realise that I don’t really want to keep going down the path I’ve been walking all this time. It’s making me think that I need a fresh start, but I know that if I move somewhere else, I’ll just feel like I’m running away from my problems. _

_It’s been sitting in the back of my mind for a while, but I don’t know...maybe I’m just bored. Or maybe I’m thinking too much about how I feel and not enough about the repercussions of leaving. _

_If there were anything I could do to make this easier on you, I would. This isn’t a fun place to be in emotionally. I guess I would say, try starting something new. Maybe there’s something in your town that you haven’t done before, or maybe there’s an opportunity there that you haven’t considered. It sounds like your job is what’s causing you a lot of grief, so why not try something else for a while? Wishing you luck._

_Until next time,_

_Patrick _

David stared down at Patrick’s words, turning them over in his head. His heart twinged at the idea that Patrick felt the same way, was struggling with the same sense of being stuck. He looked around at the motel room like an answer would be written on the wall. His eyes swept over to Alexis’s bed, where she was still fast asleep, her makeup from last night smudged on her pillow. He looked over to the door that connected his room to his parents’. He didn’t know if they were still asleep, but the space was devoid of the muffled sounds of their morning routines. He looked back down at his phone then, the sympathy he felt in his heart for Patrick tangling with the strange and unexpected swell of affection for his family that built itself up while he was thinking his life over. David started typing.

_ Hi Patrick,_

_I know people say running away from your problems never solves anything, but I think that only applies on a case-by-case basis. My family and I ended up in this tiny, nowhere town because it was the only place we could run to. We’ve found other problems since coming here, of course, but the problems that we had before, a lot of which we didn’t even think of as problems until we experienced the alternative, seem a lot farther away now, almost unthinkable. Like, we were never close as a family before we moved. Everyone always had somewhere else to be, and none of us thought it was a problem then. And then we moved here, and there were some growing pains at first, but then we got used to each other. And now, it’s like being worlds away from each other at all times feels unthinkable. Sure, now we’re literally stuck together, and we get on each other’s nerves, but I don’t have to worry about my sister as much as I used to, and I don’t have to miss my parents’ annoying but sometimes (like…_very_ rarely) charming dynamic anymore because it’s in my face every day. _

_So I won’t tell you not to go, because for me, as bad as it was at first, it was necessary, and also kind of a blessing. Whatever you decide, I hope you find what you’re looking for._

_Until next time,_

_David_

He abandoned his phone on his bedside table after he pressed send in favour of settling back into sleep. An hour or two later, when he’d finally woken up for the day, he checked his phone again, surprised to find another email from Patrick. 

_Thank you, David._

_Until next time,_

_Patrick_

David smiled down at his phone, ignoring how his heart seemed to have caught fire, and forced himself to get up and start the day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here’s the drinking game they used for You’ve Got Mail. Chapter 3 (the longest one) coming tomorrow! Thanks for reading!


	3. Chapter 3

It had been three weeks, four days, and eleven hours since David last heard from Patrick. Not that he was counting. It was just that he’d sent a handful of emails in that time and not received a reply to any of them. Even his emails about having been let go at the Blouse Barn and helping Wendy nab that _big fucking check_ from the Australian Blouse Barn were ignored. 

David spent all this time feeling the knot of anxiety in his stomach grow like a rubber band ball at the hands of a working stiff with too much time to waste. He didn’t want to bombard Patrick with messages, of course—he wasn’t trying to look like a stalker who was desperate for attention. But at the same time, it felt like a sinkhole had opened up in David’s life with Patrick’s absence, and it was getting to be impossible to ignore. 

He was worried that his advice had stepped a little too far out of bounds and that he’d offended Patrick in some way. But then Patrick wouldn’t have thanked him, right? Or was that “thank you”, like, a “thank you for talking to me all this time but this is the end of the road so goodbye” kind of “thank you”? David was not a small woodland animal, but with the way these worries gnawed at him relentlessly, he imagined he now understood what it felt like to be eaten by a bear. Like, an invisible bear, with teeth made of all of his insecurities, and a huge, lumbering body that crushed him under its weight.

When the general store finally went out of business, he saw it as an opportunity, as Patrick had advised him to so many days before, and started thinking about what he would do to take up the lease. Now, he leaned up against its facade, staring down the “for lease” sign, and thought about emailing Patrick. And so, because he had almost no self-control to exercise left, David pulled out his phone and opened the email app.

_ Hi Patrick,_

_I know we haven’t spoken in a while, and I wanted to apologise if anything I said in our last exchange offended you. I wasn’t trying to make it all about me or criticise your choices or anything like that, just giving you advice that I thought you might have needed. I’m sorry if I overstepped. _

_I just wanted to write to you now because the general store in my town closed and the space is being set for lease. I think I have a good idea of what to do with it, but I don’t really know what the first step to starting a business would be. I know you were a business major, so some professional advice would be more than welcome. I hope you’re doing okay. _

_Until next time,_

_David_

David chewed on his bottom lip, reading and rereading his words, before deciding to send it. There was a moment where he wanted to tell Patrick he missed him, but he had no idea if their relationship was at that level yet. At the very least, David hoped he’d take the bait and write back after reading the apology. After it sent, David took a deep breath and shook his head, trying to clear it of all Patrick-related thoughts. He tried to force himself to think about his plans for the general store instead so he wouldn’t check his phone every three seconds. 

An hour later, when he was at the motel, telling Stevie about his plans, his phone chimed. He paused their conversation to check it, and, to his complete disbelief, there was an email from Patrick. 

“Oh my god, he emailed back,” David breathed. 

Stevie straightened up in her seat behind the front desk. “And?” she pressed. He began to read it out loud. 

_Hi David,_

_I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch. I actually took your advice and moved a few days after my last email to you. I’ve been off the grid the past couple of weeks to settle in to my new place, which is why I’ve been radio silent. Your words were actually so helpful, and you weren’t out of bounds to say them to me at all, so you have absolutely nothing to apologise for. In fact, I have to thank you again for making that decision easier for me. _

_As for the thing about the general store, that’s great! I’m glad you found something to pour your energy into. The first thing you have to do is get in touch with the realtor and actually lease the space. If you know what you want to do with it, that’ll make it easier for you, since the realtor will be more likely to lease it if the lessee has a solid plan for generating an income with it. After that, you need to file incorporation papers for your small business. Your local government should have a representative available to help you file them. Best of luck!_

_Until next time,_

_Patrick_

“So, he moved,” Stevie said with her eyebrows raised. 

David nodded. “Mhmm. Guess he did.” 

“Well...that sounds like solid business advice, so…” Stevie said, squinting at him. He knew she was probably expecting a bigger reaction from him at the heels of all this, but he was doing his best to hide how he was both incandescently happy that Patrick had emailed him back and incredibly excited to get the ball rolling on his small business. 

“Yup. Yeah. So I’m gonna...go do what he said,” David said, backing away towards the door. 

“Good luck, David,” Stevie said with a sigh, returning to her game of solitaire on the computer. 

David followed Patrick’s instructions to the letter. He met with Ray to lease the store and found out that Ray was also the town’s point-person for incorporating businesses. Ray handed him his business card (as if David didn’t have it already) and told him to email to set up an appointment with him so they could fill out his incorporation form together. 

A few days later, David walked into Ray’s office and found himself shaking hands with a pair of soft caramel-colored eyes in a blue button-down. 

\---

_Hi Patrick,_

_I followed your instructions and leased the space, but when I went to file my incorporation papers today, the guy basically called my business a failure. Can you imagine that? I _know_ what I want to do with my business, but I guess I was just...flustered. And he totally shut me down and told me to come back when I have a better idea of what to do with it. So...not feeling great about all this right now. I hope your day is going better than mine is._

_Until next time,_

_David_

David pouted down at his phone as the email sent, hoping Patrick would reply soon with something comforting. He stared at Patrick’s email address and an errant thought swept through his mind. What were the odds that the Patrick he’d been emailing was the same Patrick he’d just had that disastrous meeting with? But he shook the thought away. That would be way too much of a coincidence. The universe didn’t work like that...right? Plus, the Patrick he’d been emailing would never have been so dismissive of David’s idea. Just as he’d cleared the thought from his mind, his phone chimed to announce that he’d gotten an email.

_Hi David,_

_I’m so sorry your meeting didn’t go as planned. Maybe the guy just didn’t quite understand what you were trying to tell him. Either way, I’m sure he didn’t say your business was a failure. Or if he did, then I’m sure he didn’t mean it. Why don’t you tell me about your business plan? Maybe getting it down via email will help you figure out what to tell him when you see him next. _

_Until next time,_

_Patrick_

It wasn’t as full of tender sympathies as David had hoped, but sweet nonetheless. David typed out his reply.

_Hey,_

_So, I was envisioning a well-decorated space where people could buy essential products and crafts made by local artists and farmers, but all the products would be under a single brand. I’m oscillating between a couple of names right now, so I’ll keep you posted on that, but it would be something really clean and timeless. The selection would be curated by me, of course, and would feature coffees and teas, pressed juices, skincare, toiletries, fresh produce, wines, cheeses, things like that. I called it a “general store, but also a very specific store” in front of that incorporation guy today. What do you think? _

_Until next time,_

_David_

As soon as he pressed send, a text came in from Stevie asking him to meet her in the front lobby. She told him she needed him to help her clean the rooms, and he wouldn’t come under any other circumstances, but he didn’t want to pass up the opportunity to bitch in person about the day he just had.

Later, when he was sitting in his empty store and high out of his mind, feeling the jagged claws of panic worm their way into the edges of his consciousness, he called business-Patrick and tried, over a series of voicemails, to repeat what he’d said to email-Patrick. 

The next day, he returned to Ray’s with his fucked-up form in hand. What he’d told email-Patrick was good, he thought, but the rest of the form—which he and Patrick didn’t even get around to during his first appointment—proved much more difficult to fill out. There was too much to think about when starting his business, more than he’d expected, and he felt like he’d been put through the wringer just trying to get this _one thing_ settled. So, he swallowed his pride and approached Patrick.

“Hi,” David said softly, stepping forward delicately. Patrick straightened up from his position hunched over the table and turned to face him. “Um...so I messed up my form. And I’m going to need another...form from you.” 

“Oh, okay,” Patrick said, equally softly. He took the scratched-out form from David and read through it quickly before folding it up and giving David an amused smile. There was something in his eyes that made David feel like Patrick had just told a joke that he wasn’t in on. 

“What?”

Patrick walked over to his desk, all the while ribbing David about his voicemails, and picked up a red folder. David cringed internally at hearing that Patrick had heard every single embarrassing, character-defacing message, and the unpleasant crackling in his chest worsened when he found out that Ray had heard them too. 

“Okay, can I just get the paperwork and then I can—” David started, desperate to end his own suffering.

“You know the good thing about the messages,” Patrick interrupted, “was that I was able to get enough information to fill out your forms.” He held the red folder out to David. 

“Oh,” David said, taking the folder. “I wish I could remember.”

“It’s a good idea, your business. Rebranding local products and crafts, it’s very inventive,” Patrick said.

The ribbing continued for a short while after that—though David thought calling the name “Rose Apothecary” pretentious was a little on the mean side, but maybe he was still feeling sensitive about this whole ordeal. 

In fact, he was still a little sore about it when, a few weeks later, Patrick turned up with his business license while he and Alexis were at the store trying to set all the product out. He knew he was probably acting a bit cold toward Patrick, but the fact that the business license was here and the product was ready to be sold lit a small fire inside David that was starting to thaw him out.

Rose Apothecary was _real_, and it was coming to life much more quickly and smoothly than he’d imagined. It filled him with a familiar feeling of pride, like when he’d get to work on starting another gallery that seemed like it would do exceptionally well. Now that he knew about his parents’ shadow patronage of those same galleries, though, there was a pit of fear that planted itself in his stomach and would _not_ go away. Suddenly he had more to lose, and more to prove, and it was all riding on his store’s success. Still, he was excited for what he had ahead of him.

He’d been emailing Patrick about all this in the last couple of weeks, but he steered clear of any more talk about the “incorporation guy”. It felt weird to him, for some reason, telling email-Patrick about another man. It’s not like they were in a romantic relationship or anything. He didn’t even know if he was into men. Maybe they flirted _a little_ sometimes, but it was harmless. But David avoided that anyway, preferring to gripe about orders coming in late or having to trek out to Elmdale and beyond to source decorations for the store. 

He wondered if he’d tell email-Patrick that business-Patrick was in his store now, letting Alexis order him around and moving boxes of hand cream between the back room and the sales floor. He wondered if he’d _ever_ muster up the courage to tell email-Patrick about Patrick at all. 

“I can hear you thinking from here,” Alexis said, pulling him out of his own head as she leaned against the counter. 

“Can you hear me thinking about all the things we still need to do while you’re playing on your phone?” he shot back.

Alexis rolled her eyes. “Why don’t you email Patrick and get him to come here and help?” 

He snorted. “I’m not going to let him meet me for the first time _here_, while this place looks like it was hit by a cardboard hurricane.” 

Alexis faced him fully. “Okay, but you’re going to meet him at _some point_, right?” 

He considered her for a second. “I don’t know, honestly. We haven’t talked about it.”

Patrick emerged then from behind the curtain and made a beeline for the back table. 

“You whispering about me over there?” Patrick asked, setting down the last box of hand creams on the table and leaning against it. He looked expectantly at Alexis and David, whose chatter had suddenly stopped now that he was in the room.

“Um. No. We were, uh, talking about something else,” David said, looking like he’d been caught.

“So, David has this cute little crush on this guy he’s been emailing with,” Alexis said conspiratorially. 

“It’s not a _crush_, Alexis,” David said, his ears going pink, his eyes falling down to his own hands, which were fidgeting with his rings.

“Okay, literally _last month_ you asked if it was possible to fall in—”

“_Okay_, Alexis, shut up.”

Patrick looked on with amusement at their bickering. His stare made David feel like he was on fire, but he couldn’t quite put a finger on why. 

Patrick returned the next day, and the pit of fear in David’s stomach flared up a bit, but it calmed after Patrick’s proposal to become, for all intents and purposes, David’s business partner. It would be nice to have help, and the fact that someone with more business expertise would be handling the financial side of the equation put his mind at ease. There was something familiar about Patrick, and the needling that David had found irritating at first seemed less grating now that they’d spent a few more hours together. In fact, it was...pretty charming, actually. He was, it seemed, just the kind of person who liked to tease playfully, and the day before, after Alexis had left and it was just the two of them unpacking boxes, the ease with which Patrick struck up conversation made the hours pass more quickly. 

Weeks passed before Patrick was given the grants he’d needed to come aboard officially as David’s business partner, and in that time, he’d spent more and more hours at the store. Patrick endeared himself to David slowly, piecemeal, like his charm and playfulness were parts of a larger puzzle that David was trying to put together in his head. It was made up of vibrant pieces, full of colour in a way that David had never expected they would be, especially since they came in such an average-looking package. ...Well, maybe not average-looking. David certainly liked the warmth that always seemed to live in Patrick’s eyes, the way his button-down-and-jeans uniform fit him snugly, hugged the planes of his body in all the right places. So when Patrick finally announced that they’d been awarded the grants, David had to fight the urge to celebrate on the spot. Here was the opportunity to keep putting this wonderfully surprising puzzle together. 

He knew that this meant he definitely had to tell email-Patrick about business-Patrick now, and he didn’t feel any less weird about it than he had before, but that night, just as he was settling into bed to agonise over that particular email draft, his phone chimed.

_Hi David,_

_I know this is kind of coming out of left field, but I’d really like to meet you in person. Is that okay?_

_\- Patrick_

Oh, _shit_. David felt like he’d been doused with freezing water. He was balancing on a highwire with no safety net, because suddenly Patrick—well-spoken, intelligent, caring Patrick, who in David’s mind was more a series of binary numbers sent across a line than a living, breathing person—would now be living and breathing right in front of him. Staring into his soul, probably, and carrying all the little things he’d learned about David in his hands. David was terrified that all of this that they had built together over the past few months, all of the little joys, would come down and shatter around him as soon as Patrick saw the real David. Hell, he could be doing this _just_ to put an end to the emails.

All the feelings that David had been denying floated to the surface. Faced with the realisation that this may all end soon, he was inconveniently made to grasp just how deeply those feelings had rooted themselves. Of course now that Patrick was something he could stand to lose, David knew that losing him was the last thing he wanted. And he didn’t even know the guy’s fucking last name. It also didn’t escape David’s notice that, as soon as things were really starting to look up for the store, this email relationship that was so valuable to him had suddenly run its course. His good karma had run out, he guessed, and the universe was trying to right itself, set things back in balance. 

But, despite all that, there was something in David, something small and hopeful and stubborn about clinging to happiness that said, “Maybe it doesn’t all have to come crashing down. Maybe meeting Patrick could be the very thing you’ve wanted all along.” David grimaced at the thought, wishing he could split himself up into personified versions of the voices fighting in his head and have them duke it out while he was shut up in a quiet room far, far away. He felt like he was being pulled apart anyway.

When he was near tears, he knew it was time to call in reinforcements. He texted Stevie, telling her he was coming over. He didn’t bother changing out of the pajamas he’d just gotten into, just pulled on some socks and the nearest pair of sneakers he could find, grabbed the keys from his parents’ room, and drove over. 

Stevie, bless her, was armed with vodka and had a pizza on the way when he arrived. 

“Okay, what the fuck is going on? You don’t pull a code red without good reason,” she said as they settled into her couch with a couple of vodkas on the rocks. 

“He wants to meet me. Patrick. Wants to meet me,” David said hollowly. 

Stevie stared at him blankly. “That’s...great. What’s the problem?” 

David tipped his head back and wrapped his arms around himself. “Why does he want to meet all of a sudden? Is he gonna break up with me in person? Can he even break up with me if we aren’t together? _Fuck_, Stevie, I don’t even know if he’s gay or straight or what—”

“Jesus _Christ_, David, finish your drink because you need to calm down. Listen, I doubt he wants to put a stop to whatever this is if he’s asking to meet in person. Honestly, from what you’ve shown me, I think you guys have been flirting pretty hardcore for the past few weeks, and especially the past few days, but if you’re that worried about it, just roll in on the assumption that you’re just friends.”

David knocked back the vodka and poured himself another before taking a cautionary sip. He slipped off the couch, choosing instead to sit cross-legged on the floor, and squeezed his own knee to ground himself. “Okay. I can do that. I can be just friends with him.” 

“And if it turns out he wants more than that, then great. If not, then you won’t have made any assumptions,” Stevie said with a shrug. David hummed his assent.

She joined him on the floor then, cradling her glass of vodka in her lap. “Listen, I know you have a whole host of monsters shouting about your insecurities at you in your head right now.” David looked at her balefully, too emotionally wrung out to argue. 

She heaved a deep sigh. “And _you_ know that I would be the last one in line when it comes to having to be vulnerable in front of another person.” David snorted. “So I know it’s scary, and I know the shit in your head isn’t making it any easier. But you can’t run away from this without trying to make it work first.”

David took a long sip of his drink. “What are you saying, then?” 

“I’m saying go for it. Because he’s made you too happy for you to not give him a fighting chance.” 

“I wouldn’t even...I don’t even know how to respond to this _email_,” he said with a desperate flail of his arms. 

She heaved another sigh and shifted over to sit right up next to him. “Get your phone out, we’ll draft it together.” 

They spent 20 minutes arguing back and forth over it, nitpicking over the connotations of words like they suddenly had PhDs in linguistics. The pizza break they took when it finally arrived did little to assuage their tempers. Finally, by the time Stevie was ready to beat David over the head with the bottle of vodka they’d just emptied, they agreed on a draft that was fit for sending.

_Hi Patrick,_

_Yes, I’d really like to meet you. Where and when?_

_-David_

The five minutes that passed between David hitting send and the arrival of Patrick’s next email felt like an eternity and a half, and David had just about shaken apart by the time the notification popped up. 

_I can come to you. Is there a place you’d like to meet? And can we do Friday?_

_-Patrick_

Friday. The day after tomorrow. It felt appropriate, too, since, to David, this felt like the end of the world. He took a shaky breath and hit reply.

_We can do Friday. I live in a town called Schitt’s Creek. There’s a little restaurant here called the Café Tropical. The food is...kind of edible, but it’s all we’ve got. 1 p.m.?_

_\- David_

It was getting easier to plan their meetup now that David knew he wasn’t being hung out to dry. After all, Patrick could have said something vague about meeting up “soon”, or even just abandoned the conversation. But Patrick was _in_ this, apparently. So now, so was David. Even if it was hard, even if it was scary. Because Stevie was right: he had to try. 

_ 1 p.m.’s great. See you there._

_\- Patrick_

“So 1 p.m. on Friday at the Café,” David said. 

Stevie smiled. “Good. Now let’s get really smashed and watch shitty TV.” 

David sighed in relief. “Excellent idea.” 

David didn’t bother trying to drive home that night, so they ended up in Stevie’s bed, staring at the ceiling, letting the alcohol still circulating in their systems lull them to sleep. 

“Hey,” Stevie said, breaking the silence. 

“Hmm?”

“What if it’s Patrick Brewer?” 

David turned his head to look at her. The thought had crossed his mind several times now since he first met business-Patrick, but she didn’t need to know that. Those were flames that he didn’t want stoked. “Stevie, I’m too tired for this fucking conspiracy theory right now.” 

“No, hear me out,” she said, shifting so she was on her side and propping her head up on her hand. “His email is Patrick B, right? And he’s a business major who _just_ moved…”

“Patrick is a _very_ common first name, and business is a _very_ common major. And lots of people move,” David said, trying his best to sound sure. 

Stevie rolled on, counting out all the things she knew both Patricks had in common from what David had told her, like how they’re both take-charge people and they both seem to prefer tea to coffee. 

“You’re full of shit,” David said with a laugh, a little less confidently than he might have liked.

“Bet you I’m right,” Stevie said simply. 

“I’ll take that bet,” he replied, stubborn.

“Two bottles of vodka to replace the ones we drank through.”

“You’re on.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter coming tomorrow! Thanks for reading!


	4. Chapter 4

“So today’s the day,” Stevie said over breakfast.

“So it is,” David said, trying very hard not to show how nervous he was that in just a few hours, he’d probably be sitting in this very booth in front of the man who had brightened every day of the past few months.

“And where’s Patrick Brewer gonna be while you’re out at lunch?” she asked, cocking her head, intrigued.

David rolled his eyes and put the menu down. “He texted to say he wouldn’t be coming into the store today. Apparently he had something urgent to take care of first.” 

Stevie’s face broke into a satisfied smile, and she rested her head in her hand. “Right, and would that something be _you_?”

“Listen, he spent enough time with me at the store yesterday. He deserves a break. And you’re not getting that vodka,” David said with a huff. 

“Mhmm, and how was yesterday?” 

David made a face at her. “He was very nice and very cute. But we knew that. That doesn’t make him any more likely to be _my_ Patrick, though.” 

“Oh, _your_ Patrick,” Stevie said, sarcastic.

David made a face at her. “Okay.” 

Stevie sighed. “Alright, you’re definitely just in denial at this point. There’s no point in getting through to you. But you better have that vodka money ready.” 

“No, _you_ better have vodka money ready,” David shot back, but it didn’t have the heat he’d intended. Stevie snorted. 

The hours between breakfast and lunch inched past glacially. It was all David could do to busy himself at the store—and while there _was_ a lot to do, he didn’t want to do any of it. He was caught between wanting to press pause and wanting to press fast-forward. Parts of him wanted to cut to the chase, finally find out who had been sitting behind that screen for so long, stirring up emotions in him that he didn’t even know he was capable of having. Other parts of him thought the nerves might eat him alive before he’d even get the chance to sit down. 

David’s brain could be a cruel thing sometimes. He muscled through it, trying his hardest not to think himself into a panic spiral as he arranged and rearranged bottles of rosemary mint shampoo and witch hazel toner. But every few minutes, an errant Patrick-related thought slipped through the cracks of the mental dam he’d attempted to build. There was a moment when, after he’d finally aligned every product in the store, he allowed himself to really consider the possibility that Patrick Brewer would be the one joining him for lunch today. 

David imagined him walking in, imagined how it would feel to see the man he’d been working so closely with sit in front of him in the booth and introduce himself—Patrick Brewer, Missed Connections ad writer and emailer extraordinaire. David could almost picture it—the tender, funny Patrick that he’d gotten to know online twisting together beautifully with the adorable, teasing Patrick that had helped him build his business. He imagined trading stories with him, stories that were closer to the heart than he’d ever expect to share with business-Patrick, and knowing that they were safe in his hands because he’d have _known_ him already, have seen into him the way no one else really has. David even closed his eyes for a second, envisioning their meeting, sitting just a table width apart, telling the same inside jokes he’d been typing out for months to that warm, soft-eyed face. It almost sent a shiver down his spine. 

But he couldn’t let himself dwell on the thought. It was just _too much_ of a coincidence. He tried to tell himself the things he told Stevie—that the details that email-Patrick had shared about himself with David were all too common. In truth, the Patrick he had been emailing with could have been anyone, and, statistically, probably _would be_ someone else. He tried not to let himself be disappointed by that fact; after all, this was the same Patrick he’d shared his deepest inner thoughts with, the same Patrick who came back with empathy and grace and humour every time. No matter which Patrick among the millions in the world it turned out to be, David knew he’d like him all the same. 

He’d set an alarm on his phone for 12:55, and when it finally went off, his flayed nerves rejoiced. David steeled himself and made his way to the café, settling into a booth facing the door three minutes early. 

He fidgeted with his sweater—his favourite, the one with a lightning bolt woven into the front, and he thought there might be a joke in all this somewhere about how everything had started with a shock of electricity sent down a line, transmitting messages from one phone to another—and stared hard at the menu. Every time the bell over the door rang, his head snapped up, and he was annoyed at himself for having such an abrupt physical response. 

1:00 came and went. When you’re counting time by every passing second, a minute feels like a lifetime. At eight minutes past 1, the bell jingled and David, once again, looked up. Patrick Brewer, dressed in his usual blue with the added flair of a tasteful suit jacket, looking goddamn heaven-sent, offered him a friendly wave. David felt his lungs shrivel up, every molecule of air vacating his body like it was a building on fire. His heart was hanging limply by a string, shocked into a deep stillness that a defibrillator couldn’t revive. Somehow, David found it in him to wave back weakly, too frozen to do anything else but watch as Patrick approached his booth. 

“Hi,” David murmured, trying his best not to let his voice betray the fact that his organs were failing. 

“Hi.”

“I thought you had stuff to take care of,” David said. He didn’t dare let his hopes up, let himself think that _this_ was the Patrick he was waiting for, that he could ever get this lucky in a million lifetimes. 

“I took care of them. You waiting for someone?”

David’s lips pressed themselves into a hard line. “Yeah, actually. Um. But you can stay for a while if you want. Until he gets here.” 

Patrick sat in front of him at the booth, settling himself in comfortably. He left his phone on the tabletop. “So is this...the email guy?” he asked. 

“Um. Yes. I just...think he’s running late? I’m sure he’ll be here soon. I think. I think he’ll be here soon.” 

Patrick offered him a smile. “Why don’t you email him? Ask him where he is?”

“It’s only been a few minutes. Maybe he runs fashionably late, like I do,” David said defensively. The possibility of business-Patrick being _his_ Patrick seemed less and less likely by the second, and the fact that business-Patrick was here, joking around, _rubbing it in_, was irritating him more than it should have. 

“Might as well give it a shot, though. Tell him you’re here,” Patrick said nonchalantly. 

David bit his bottom lip, frowning and feeling a little like he was playing a game for which he didn’t know the rules. He drafted an email letting Patrick know that he was at a booth near the door, wearing a lightning bolt sweater, and sent it, not wanting to let his new business partner see him agonise over an email like he normally would. As soon as the email whooshed away on David’s phone, Patrick’s buzzed. David chanced a glance down at it and—

“I-it’s you?” David stared at Patrick, disbelieving. There was a storm of emotions brewing inside him: a swirl of excitement and relief and embarrassment whipped around in his head, making him dizzy and rattling the windows of his heart.

“It’s me,” Patrick said with a hesitant smile. “You, uh, you hadn’t figured that out?” He chuckled nervously.

David scrunched his face up and pushed his palms up against his eyes. “Okay, _Patrick_ is a _very_ common name, and I’ve been trying not to assume anything about him—or you—well, either of you—fuck.”

Patrick chuckled and gingerly pulled David’s hands away from his face. “It’s okay, David, I was just teasing.”

David peered at him, looking like he was on the verge of tears. “I _wanted_ it to be you,” he said in a whisper. “I wanted it to be you, and I should’ve realised that before now, but I—I didn’t know—”

Just as the first tear finally slid down David’s cheek, Patrick brushed it away with the back of his hand. “Don’t cry, David72,” he murmured with a kind smile.

David couldn’t control the watery laugh that escaped him. “So you _have_ watched _You’ve Got Mail_.”

Patrick grinned. “I wanted to see what I was up against.” 

They split a plate of mozzarella sticks and went over all of it, from the very beginning, from that very first ad on Craigslist that had miraculously brought them together, filling up the hours with the moments in each other’s lives that they’d missed. And when Patrick drove David home to the motel that night, David kissed him with everything he had, pouring into that simple brush of their lips every happy thought, every squeeze of the heart that he’d felt over the past few months as they passed messages to each other like letters in bottles sent floating across seas. And when Patrick thanked him, David knew that it wasn’t just the kiss he was being thanked for: it was the companionship, the comfort, the understanding that they had built between them from nothing. David felt just as grateful. 

\---

On the night of their wedding, when David cuddled up to Patrick under the sheets, warm, and happy, and _married_, he took a chance and whispered into the darkness the question that had been sitting at the back of his mind since that day at the café.

“How did you find me?”

David felt, rather than saw, Patrick’s head move, and his skin warmed under his new husband’s invisible gaze. 

“I guess the universe heard me,” Patrick whispered back. 

David shook his head, the sweetness of that sentiment just too much for him to handle after the beautiful and emotional day they’d just had. 

“What do you mean?” 

Patrick sighed. “When I was writing that ad...after I saw you, it felt like my heart was struck by lightning. And there was a line that I almost included in it, but at the time, I didn’t understand what I was feeling, what it meant. But...when I saw you, I thought, ‘I hope he finds me.’”

David leaned forward and kissed whatever bit of skin he could reach. He hummed against it, feeling like his insides had liquified. 

“And, uh...later, when I left home, I didn’t really know where I was going. I just...picked a highway and drove down it and if an exit felt right, then I took it. At the time, I thought I was abandoning the more...careful parts of who I was.”

“Clearly not,” David murmured, something light playing in his tone. 

Patrick chuckled. “No, definitely not. But I didn’t have a plan or a road map, just a gut instinct. And I guess that was the universe leading me to you.” 

David slid a free hand up Patrick’s chest, slowly finding his way to cup Patrick’s jaw in his palm. He leaned up further, bracing himself on an elbow, and kissed his husband in the deep blue darkness of their bedroom. 

“I’m glad it did.”

**Author's Note:**

> This has been quite the ride. BIG thank yous to [Aly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wardo_wedidit/pseuds/wardo_wedidit) for beta-ing this and to the lovely [Claire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cromarty/pseuds/cromarty) and the wonderful [Em](https://archiveofourown.org/users/goingmywaydoll/pseuds/goingmywaydoll) for being my personal cheerleaders. This one's for Caitlin, my love and my soul twin. I love you all so much. This would have died in my WIP folder if it weren't for you.
> 
> This is, by far, the longest thing I’ve ever written (longer even than my undergrad thesis project, which took me 6 months to write) and I know it’s not as long as a lot of the other amazing work out there, but thank you so much for sticking with it and reading it all the same. Cheers!
> 
> I'm at [noahnicholasreid](https://noahnicholasreid.tumblr.com) on tumblr if you wanna come scream in my inbox about You've Got Mail :)


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